An experiment has been set up to explore the possibilities of using holeburning to expose the detailed IR spectra of ground states of proteins. Such spectra have never been simplified, yet they contain great amounts of information about protein structure. For this purpose we have incorporated the CO laser from RLBL with an FTIR instrument which forms part of the instrumentation used by an NIH Program Project. The CO laser is used to irradiate the protein while its IR spectrum is being observed at high sensitivity and spectral resolution. Some preliminary results are now available.